10 Surreal Images of Antarctica’s Tiny ‘Sandhoppers’

Antarctica is about more than penguins , seal , and spectacular ( but vanish ) glacier . Even the tiniest organisms at the bottom of the world are reasonably stunning .

amphipod miss the name acknowledgment of other wildlife that populate Antarctica and the Southern Ocean . But reckon them magnetic — if slightly creepy — microfauna . Without them , the Antarctic would n’t be what it is . Huw Griffiths , a marine biogeographer with the British Antarctic Survey , say there are 560 amphipod species that have been identified in Antarctic waters , with most hanging around on the seafloor .

“ Amphipod crustaceans ( sometimes sleep with as sandhoppers ) are the second most diverse invertebrate mathematical group in Antarctica ( after the sea escargot ) and are found from the beach right down to the deepest ocean trenches , ” he wrote in an e-mail . “ This diversity means that they play an equally wide-ranging set of role in the Antarctic food WWW , they are an important food source for high predators such as fish , sea bird and mammals , but are also predator , grazers , and recyclers of dead and crumble material . ”